TCP: Transport Layer
TCP Flow Control:
TCP provides a flow-control service to its applications to eliminate the possibility of the
sender overflowing the receiver’s buffer. Flow control is thus a speed-matching service—
matching the rate at which the sender is sending against the rate at which the receiving
application is reading.
TCP provides flow control by having the sender maintain a variable called the receive
window. Informally, the receive window is used to give the sender an idea of how much
free buffer space is available at the receiver. Because TCP is full-duplex, the sender at
each side of the connection maintains a distinct receive window. Let’s investigate the
receive window in the context of a file transfer. Suppose that Host A is sending a large
file to Host B over a TCP connection. Host B allocates a receive buffer to this connection;
denote its size by RcvBuffer. From time to time, the application process in Host B reads
from the buffer. Define the following variables:
● LastByteRead: the number of the last byte in the data stream read from the buffer
by the application process in B
● LastByteRcvd: the number of the last byte in the data stream that has arrived
from the network and has been placed in the receive buffer at B
Because TCP is not permitted to overflow the allocated buffer, we must have
LastByteRcvd – LastByteRead <= RcvBuffer
● The receive window, denoted rwnd is set to the amount of spare room in the
buffer: rwnd = RcvBuffer – [LastByteRcvd – LastByteRead]
Because the spare room changes with time, rwnd is dynamic.
How does the connection use the variable rwnd to provide the flow-control service? Host
B tells Host A how much spare room it has in the receiving buffer by placing its current
value of rwnd in the receive window field of every segment it sends to A. Initially, Host B
sets rwnd = RcvBuffer. Note that to pull this off, Host B must keep track of several
connection-specific variables.
Host A in turn keeps track of two variables, LastByteSent and LastByteAcked, which
have obvious meanings. Note that the difference between these two variables,
LastByteSent – LastByteAcked, is the amount of unacknowledged data that A has sent
into the connection. By keeping the amount of unacknowledged data less than the value
of rwnd, Host A is assured that it is not overflowing the receive buffer at Host B. Thus,
Host A makes sure throughout the connection’s life that
LastByteSent – LastByteAcked <= rwnd
There is one minor technical problem with this scheme. To see this, suppose Host B’s
receive buffer becomes full so that rwnd = 0. After advertising rwnd = 0 to Host A, also
suppose that B has nothing to send to A. Now consider what happens. As the application
process at B empties the buffer, TCP does not send new segments with new rwnd values
to Host A; indeed, TCP sends a segment to Host A only if it has data to send or if it has
an acknowledgment to send. Therefore, Host A is never informed that some space has
opened up in Host B’s receive buffer— Host A is blocked and can transmit no more data!
To solve this problem, the TCP specification requires Host A to continue to send
segments with one data byte when B’s receive window is zero. These segments will be
acknowledged by the receiver. Eventually the buffer will begin to empty and the
acknowledgments will contain a nonzero rwnd value.
